Job Opportunity at Barnardo's - Assistant Director Children's Services (Responsible Individual for Residential Services)

Contract type: Permanent
Hours: 36.25
Salary: £43,096.99 - £59,303.00 (Full Time Equivalent) plus £3,542.86 Inner London Weighting
Closing Date: 19 May 2022
Interview Date: 31 May 2022

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Direct responsibility for the London children's residential services and developing further residential provision across London and the South East

A vacancy has arisen to join the senior management team working across our South East and London regions. If you are an inspirational and aspirational leader in Children's Services with a drive to ensure excellence for children, young people and their families then this opportunity may be for you. The senior leadership teams for the region, including our Assistant Directors Children's Services and School Principals provide a full coverage of oversight, support, challenge and presence for our teams and services. The post therefore requires the applicant to be able to travel across the regional South East and London area at times. Barnardo's does have a work from anywhere policy and the postholder will need to be confident in digital communication and remote working.

You will have received the generic Assistant Director Children's Services job description and person profile.  The successful post holder will be responsible for a varied portfolio of work in Children's Services however will mainly focus on children's residential care home provision. This particular Senior Manager portfolio currently includes oversight of residential services including 3 residential care home settings in London therefore will require the post holder to register with Ofsted representing these Barnardo's services as Responsible Individual. The requirement to build the portfolio also includes the senior leadership oversight and development of further residential provision across London and the wider South East.

The successful postholder will work with senior colleagues to ensure we continue to develop services to best meet the needs of children, young people and their families in line with Barnardo's Corporate Strategy to achieve Safer Childhoods, Stronger Families and Positive Futures.

The ideal candidate will be able to evidence:

• Depth and breadth of management experience across a range of service areas including residential care for children; ideally including residential care for children with additional needs.
  
• Knowledge of relevant legislation, guidance and quality standards that apply to children's homes.
  
• Strong leadership skills and capabilities to ensure the standards of care, help, protection and support provided by all services are of high quality.
  
• How you will promote tolerance, equality and diversity and challenge any discriminatory behaviours.
  
• Flexibility and responsiveness to managing problems with a Solution Focussed attitude and approach.
  
• Excellent communication and personal skills around engagement, leadership, workforce development and change management.
  
• Good working knowledge and/or experience of business development and service development.
  
•  Proactively seeking opportunities to build new relationships and deepen existing ones with local authorities, health partners and other commissioning bodies. 
  
• Commitment to co-design and co-production.
  

When completing your application form please refer to your skills, knowledge and experience in relation to the Person Specification and Job Profile as well as those specified above. This should be done with an understanding of the context of the post described.

Barnardo's South East and London Regions
The South East and London regions are two defined areas for Barnardo's children's services covering a wide geographical area including Greater London and the London Boroughs, Essex, Kent, Medway, Surrey, East Sussex, West Sussex, Brighton and Hove, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. Teams across these two regions are diverse covering all areas of Barnardo's Corporate Strategy including a number of Family Centres and Family Hubs, CSA and CSE services, Residential Care, Mental Health and Wellbeing, Family Support, Therapeutic support, Advocacy and our two Barnardo's Special Schools. The South East and London Senior Management Teams, led respectively by the Regional Director and the Head of London, provide the support and senior leadership to our operational teams and manage relationships across the regions.

Objectives
As a strategic leader the postholder will develop Barnardo's work with children, young people and their families in order to respond to emerging needs quickly and efficiently ensuring the highest quality of interventions and services are delivered.  With responsibility for ensuring the safety and protection of children and young people is practised and understood by all colleagues, paid and unpaid, you will champion Barnardo's policies and procedures and relevant legislative requirements. The role requires resilience and professional assurance to be able to work remotely; to act as the senior relationship manager externally across sectors and internally at Barnardo's. This is a key and influential role, working as part of the South East and London regional Children's Services Senior Management Teams.

Please see the role profiles for the essential criteria for this role.

At Barnardo's we are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and we expect all staff and volunteers to share in this commitment.  Our safer recruitment processes mean that the safety and welfare of the child is paramount at every stage of the process and therefore, we adopt rigorous scrutiny in our pre-employment checking. This post is subject to a range of pre-employment checks including a Criminal Records Enhanced Disclosure for the successful candidate.

Flexibility
Barnardo's believe in creating equality of opportunity in the workplace and supporting people to manage their work-life balance; we are therefore open to offering flexible working arrangements.

About Barnardo's
At Barnardo's we believe in children – no matter who they are, what they have done or what they have been through. Please read about our basis and values following the link below. You will be asked questions relating to them as part of the recruitment process for this role.

Barnardo's is committed to having a diverse and inclusive workforce for staff and volunteers. We actively encourage applications from disabled, Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic and male candidates as they are under-represented within Barnardo's.

Full details and application documents here